MASK, IMAGE AND TRUTH
15
6. The "norm" among Marxist critics is "an apostate from .more
urbane and plausible ideas, and he commonly
car~ies
with 'bim ·tbe rancor
of one who found them unbearably_romplex and onerous;
~ .~~ns··(to
the
Childi-sh
simplicities that··are the essence of
a.U.gttadceiy:'''H:wL.
Menc·
,.,•
ken's.
ideas..
"bif'
·syphilis, beer, .-the .
boob01~:i~, ,:til~~
"Star 'Spangled Ban·neTjo.
. Methodist
QlioiolttG,
.an[ t'lie" Superman - are unbear.ahly ·complex
and->~~---.
oneroHs.·
·:The ;ords .of Marx, .Engels'
~d
Lenj_ll;
~-re: .c.tii!~hl~
simple -.: .
~
..
quackery. To abandon'.Mencken for
-~~.m~ikes·- you
not only an apostate
~-
'
but "a man of the
~ngenitally. sub~rdinate
and third-.rate 'sort." 1\gain·: . ·, .---· .. •"''
to disagree with
reactionary
writers.·ts to be --full of
roRcsr;;
To
~ay
that
revolutionary
writers are mostly
p;o~~:.
with :bOgus Anglo-Saxon names
who write shaky English
that~seems
a bad tt;anslation from'theYiClaish, to
accuse them
-o-f.
being tools of the
Moscow.~'(]ly
Office,· to call them "re-
porters who see what isn:t there," muddle-headed failures who love money
above the. common-to say this is to be
free of rancor.
This is
urbaJJ.e
arrd
plausible.
.
/
-
7. Proletarian literature was . discovered "probably not more than
two or three years ago." 'So much fo-r
The Weavers,
Maxim Gorki, the
early works ·of Jack: London and Upton Sinclair, John .
R~~
Joe ·.·Hill,
Mayakovsky, Martin Anderson Nexo,_
Be-t.t~ld
Brecht, Erich l'v.liihsam, .
Ernst Toller
rt
al.
·
Does anyone in the bourgeois camp question this kind of "criticism"?
Does anyone accuse the Baltimore Soapboxer of being Hitler's paid agent,
an artist in uniform? Not at all. Malicious, ignorant, illiterate, anti–
semitic slander against reYolutionary writers is considered witty and just.
No reactionary -claims that all criticism is bad. Only Marxist criticism
is dangerous for the soul of the "creative" writer,-and only the bourgeois
novelist, poet or playwright is really "creative."
When Upton Sinclair was supposed to be socialist, his works were
ignored for years. He was compelled to publish many of them at
hi~
own
expense. The reaction howled that his novels had no style and no humor.
Now that he has produced an Epic and spent a sleepless night of ecstasy
because President Roosevelt smiled at him, H. L. Mencken discovers he
is both a stylist and a humorist.
This
is quackery.
Creator and Critic
But there is the sincere type of creative writer who fears that Marxist
criticism wishes to torture his imagination into the procrustian bed of
communist formula. He believes the reactionary agitators who assure him
that when he supports the proeltariat in its struggle for freedom his writ–
ings will have to meet "the specifications of the Moscow Holy Office."
He is ig!lorant of our reiterated assurances that we consider the abstract,
